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PERILOUS VOYAGES.
aN

HERE are splendid steam-
ships which regularly cross
the Atlantic, with the many
Americans who,like to visit
the old country. These
steamships are like floating
mansions, if not palaces,
with every luxury on board,
and with everything to make

  

who are good sailors, and
nothing can make those
comfortable. on ship-board who are not. But there
have been some bold men who, despising the comforts
and safety of the big ships, choose to risk their lives
in mere ‘ccckle-shells.’ .

‘s About ten years ago a little vessel called the Red,
White, and Blue, of less than two tons and a half,
crossed the Atlantic in thirty-four days from New
York to the chops of the Channel, with two men and
a dog for her crew. ‘This boat was a life-boat, ship-
rigged and decked over; her length only 26 ft.;
breadth, 6 ft.; depth of hold, 2 ft. 8 in.; from deck
to keel, 3 ft. Her sails were fore-topmast, stay-sail,
jib, and flying-jib ; fore, main, and mizen courses ;
top-sails, top-gallant sails, royal, and spanker. In
addition to these plain sails she was provided with
fore-topmast stunsails, fore and main top-gallant
stunsails, storm fore-staysail, and trysail. A picture
of this little vessel is given in the JUlustrated London
News of 1866, No. 1389.

Next year a still smaller boat, named the John T.
Ford, started from Halifax on July 16th, having on
board three men and a boy. She was struck by
a heavy sea off Cork on August 19th, and over-
turned, and only one sailor escaped drowning, being
picked up by a passing ship on August 23rd.

In 1870 the City of Ragusa, a decked boat of less
than two tons burden, 20 ft. in length and 6 ft. in
breadth of beam, left the port of Liverpool for New
York, manned by the owner, Captain Buckley, and
an <Austrian-Italian, Pietro Di Costa, both ex-
perienced sailors. This little ship was rigged as a

awl, and could set square-sails on both masts, spread-
ing altogether seventy yards of canvas in eight or
more sails. She was also furnished with a two-
bladed screw propeller, which could be worked either
by hand or by a windmill erected just before the
maizen-mast.

Ip 1876 another of these perilous voyages was
made by Alfred Johnsen, a Dane, who had
settled as a fisherman in America. Ile is a smart,
hardy man of thirty-five. His boat, called the
Gloucester, from Gloucester, in Massachusetts, is
about 20 ft. long, decked over, and built in three
water-tight compartments. She carries one mast,
and can set a main-sail, two jibs, and a square-sail.

-Aft the hatchway is an opening in the form of a

tank, where Johnsen sat during the whole of his two

months’ voyage. Behind this is a small locker,:

where he kept his compass, quadrants, charts, and
ether articles. The sleepmg-place is in the fore-

 

those people comfortable -

hatchway. Johnsen had been thinking of the trip.
for about two years, and reckoned that it would take
him about ninety days to make the voyage from
America to England, and he laid in provisions for
that time, consisting of preserved meats, condensed
milk, fruits, hard bread, tea and coffee, and sixty
gallons of water. He had a kerosine stove on board,
and a lamp of high illuminating power. He left
Gloucester on June 18th, the people cheering him as
he sailed away. He had fine weather at first, but
afterwards met heavy gales. In one of these he met
a barque bound for Liverpool, and the captain offered
to take him and his boat on board and drop him off
Cape Clear and say nothing about the lift he had
given him, but Johnsen declined.

Ale afterwards fell in with another ship, when in a
“gale about 300 miles from Cape Clear. The captain
of this brig urged Johnsen to come on board, and
told him that the big seas would have him if he did
not. The captain shortened sail, and kept company
with the little Gloucester for about two hours. After
this the little ship could not ‘run,’ as the sea got
very heavy, and Johnsen ‘hove-to,’ and the brig
went on her course. Half-an-hour after he hove-to
a breaker struck the boat broadside, and it turned
bottom up. For about twenty minutes the sailor was
on the bottom of the boat, and wished, he tells us,
that he had got on board the brig when he was asked
to do so, By desperate work he at last got his boat
righted and himself on board—not a minute too soon,
for he saw a shark in the water close to him. As he
did not care for such company, he fastened a knife
to an oar, and stabbed the shark, and it left him.
When the boat righted she was half full of water.
His provisions were much damaged, and he had no
means of drying his clothes, for the gale lasted till
next day. On August 7th the lonely voyager spcke
a brig from Liverpool, and got bread and bottled
porter from her. On August 8th he was off Cape
Clear. Next day he sighted Pembroke on the Welsh
coast, this being’ his first sight of land since he left
America. He put in at Abercastle, and provisioned
his little craft. Next day he had a head-wind and
a calm sea till he got to Holyhead, where he arrived
on August 18th, and reached Liverpool on the 21st.
He was in good health,-but suffered for a time from
cramp and stiffness in his limbs, from being two
months in so confined aspace. He also suffered from
sore eyes, because he had had to keep awake always
at night during his voyage, and kept his light burning
Jest he should be run down, as he was in the track
of the ocean steamers. He slept by day, taking off
his rudder and sails, and letting his craft drift with
the waves.

When Johnsen arrived in the Mersey, he and his
little ship were viewed with much interest. When
he was asked if he would care to repeat the voyage,
he replied that he * thought he had had about enough
of it,’ and he returned to America in one of the mail
steamers which would do the distance in about ten
days on which he had spent sixty, with no special
advantage, except to show that he was a very plucky,
not to say foolhardy, fellow, who has been protected
by the Almighty in his perilous voyage, and pre-
served, we hope, to do some good and useful work
in the world.